In a recent letter to the editor, Matt Traverso rails against women’s-only scholarships, proclaiming that “[Women] don’t need the scholarships anymore!” after politely asking feminists to “shut the hell up.” He also invites females to burn their bras, then tastefully ends his letter by declaring “I damned well expect to be paid for it”-it being his penis. By the end of the letter, one realizes that perhaps Mr. Traverso expects the penis scholarship not only because he’s angry at women (or, should I say, womyn) but because he clearly has not received a scholarship for his ability to reason fairly or write coherently.
Mr. Traverso also rails against the women’s student clubs on our campus-there are nine (gasp!). Here, he makes several errors: first, he claims that such clubs discriminate because they ban men. Most women’s groups on our campus do welcome discussion with men (and, I imagine, are more than willing to get their hands on Mr. Traverso after his letter-a little boxer-burning, perhaps). Some even actively reach out to address not only issues of feminism, but issues of masculinity as well. Next, Mr. Traverso declares that there are no men’s groups. He does mention Black Men/White Men (which is a men’s group…) but forgets One in Four and the new discussion group devoted to talking about the challenges of meeting expectations of manhood in a hyper-masculine society. And, unlike Mr. Traverso predicts, these men’s groups are not labeled “sexist” by women. I doubt that membership in one will, as he claims, “permanently damage my chances at running for political office”-though his letter just might.
The thing that Mr. Traverso misses is America’s long legacy of not only educational inequality, but creating educational disadvantages. As Gilda Lerner outlines in her book The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, power structures always favored men in churches, colleges and early schools. If women subversively gained power with such structures, the power structure was changed. Women seeking an education had to constantly reinvent the wheel because their history was never documented, meaning role models were rare. Unfortunately, the disadvantaging continues today, but in more insidious ways-girls drop out of math and science programs in high schools fearing they are “too smart;” examinations of classroom discourse show teachers overwhelmingly affirm male participation; studies show that pre-primary girls are now encouraged to play with blocks, but that even feminist teachers praise them merely for doing so (“Look! Jane is playing with blocks!”) while boys have to create something with the blocks to earn praise (“Wow, Dick-you are quite the engineer!”). Is that equality?
Now I’m sure that Mr. Traverso would claim women on our campus are equal-after all, there are nine SGAC groups devoted to women’s issues. But, might the mere existence of such groups speak to a problem? With all those pre-meds, women on our campus surely cannot fear science! Why, then, is our School of Engineering overwhelmingly male? Our School of Law has about an equal male/female ratio. Why, then, does my female friend in the Law School have to watch images of scantily-clad women pop-up the screen savers of her male classmates? Is seeing your future colleagues display images of your gender in sexually suggestive poses a new, er, “maxim” of legal education? Is that equality?
While the University continues to make attempts to recruit women faculty, its staff of full-time professors remains overwhelmingly male (our secretarial staff, in contrast, is predominantly female). With tenure determination usually after five to six years of assistant professorship, and tenure depending on major publications (perhaps a book), women desiring tenure must often delay childbirth. Does that fact that much of higher education’s tenure-system ignores women’s biological clocks symbolize educational equality?
All of his inflammatory remarks aside, Mr. Traverso is wrong. Female-only scholarships can “help the cause” by ensuring that females have the means necessary to continue their advancement not only into college itself, but into higher education and the professions. Many women still live in families where money is saved for the son’s college education but for the daughter’s wedding. Even though Mr. Traverso would like to believe that women’s-only scholarships are awarded only on the basis of sex organs, they are actually awarded because women continue to exist in a world of educational institutions-pre-primary to post-secondary-that often systemically disadvantage females, define female educational achievement by masculine qualities and endorse the same type of misogynic rhetoric found in Mr. Traverso’s letter. If fighting that means women have the advantage in finding college funding, so be it.